We Come In Peace: The Paramount Summer Classic Film Series Sci-Fi Week!
As far as science fiction experiences go, the closest we have ever come to an extra terrestrial is when our cat got tapeworms (if your cat has ever had them, you know what we are talking about) or that time that we visited the meteor crater in Arizona (Hey! Look! It’s a big hole in the ground! That’ll be $15.00.) Truthfully, that’s the closest we need to come to any real life UFOishness as we have no desire to recount our “probing” stories to inquiring minds. Luckily, the Paramount has put together an entire week of out-of-this-world films so that we can vicariously live through other people's, uh, probing. And it all starts tonight!
The Thing From Another World
Monday, July 30th @ 7PM
Tuesday, July 31st @ 9:15PM
Back in 1992, our lives were changed by a little film called Encino Man, in which Brendan Fraser plays a frozen cave man who is exhumed from Sean Astin’s backyard. Once he thaws, much hilarity ensues, including a priceless scene where Fraser drinks straight out of a convenience store Slurpee machine. The Thing From Another World is very similar to Encino Man, only imagine that the chummy cave man is a vicious, blood-sucking alien and that the Slurpee machine is your head. Yeah, that’s about right. TTFAW is credited with starting the whole “evil monsters will destroy humanity” movie fad of the 1950’s, and rightfully so. All jokes aside, this may be one of the most enjoyable alien movies of all time, and its desolate Arctic setting may be a precursor to the claustrophobic genius of Alien. Eat your heart out Sigourney Weaver!
THEM!
Monday, July 30th @ 9:10PM
Tuesday, July 31st @ 7PM
In the 1950’s, children were instructed to crawl under their desks in the event of a nuclear attack, as if a thin wooden plank and a box of metal could protect them from being irradiated. What the schools didn’t teach them was how to protect themselves against gigantic nuked ants! This film gives new meaning to the term “zone of alienation.” Tagged as the first film to deal with America’s growing fear of nuclear power, THEM! was nominated for a best special effects Academy Award in 1955, but was beat out by the oceanic mindbender 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Who do you think would win: a crabby, harpoon-wielding sea captain, or an entire flamethrower-carrying army?
Fahrenheit 451
Wednesday, August 1st @ 7PM
Friday, August 3rd @ 9:25PM
Our high school English teacher once made us do a book analysis of the Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451, but we don’t remember much from it, probably because we were preoccupied with her hideous open-toed sandaled feet. We would rather burn all the books in our house than be assaulted with those fungified digits for nine more months. Okay, that’s not true at all. We do remember that the biggest misconception about the book/film is that they are about censorship. In fact, Bradbury was more concerned with the effect of television on modern society and how most intellects were in retrograde from the absence of book-inspired independent thought. Directed by our fav French auteur Francois Truffaut, F451 is his only English language film and was his first foray into Technicolor.
Slaughterhouse-Five
Wednesday, August 1st @ 9:15PM
Friday, August 3rd @ 7:15PM
Another high school English teacher favorite, SH5 is the trippy tale of Billy Pilgrim, a man who has become “un-stuck” in time. His life continues to happen, but in a non-sequential manner, where his death happens somewhere in the middle of other meaningless vignettes and he has no free will. Billy becomes a fatalist where his core belief is that “among the things he could not change were the past, the present, and the future.” Writer Kurt Vonnegut formed the core of this work around his experience as one of just seven American prisoners of war to survive the Dresden death camp. So it goes.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Saturday, August 4th @ 7PM
Sunday, August 5th @ 4:30PM
Combining mashed potato mountains and the polyphonic brilliance of John Williams, CE3K became the gold standard for all extra terrestrial themed films to follow. For the first time, non-human beings were portrayed in a benevolent light, as opposed to the earth-squashing, human-torturing aliens that America had come to fear. In fact, the word “alien” is never used to describe the visitors in the film and no aggression is ever showed by the UFOs. Written and magically directed by Steven Spielberg, this movie brilliantly captures adults in a state of transition between fear and wonder and portrays what it is like to be singularly dedicated to one specific task, no matter the consequences. And 30 years later, this still means something. This is important.
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
Saturday, August 4th @ 4:30PM
Sunday, August 5th @ 2PM
Looking back on our childhood, we can’t believe that parents let their children watch this movie. Sure, there are the cute parts involving the deep friendship between Elliott and E.T. and the always adorable, pre-drug binge Drew Barrymore, but then there are the really disturbing, upsetting parts towards the end. We don’t want to give anything away in case you haven’t seen the film, but seriously, there is some messed up stuff in this movie. That being said, we loved our E.T. action figure and wish that we still had it. E.T. Phone Home! El-ii-ottt! Beeeeee Goooood.
Metropolis
Saturday, August 4th @ 10:10PM
Sunday, August 5th @ 7:20PM
German expressionism was so hot in 1927. 80 years later, it can still scorch the screen. Metropolis is thought to be the keystone of the sci-fi film genre (yeah, yeah Aelita fans, lets not split hairs here) and was certainly one of the most ambitious and expensive films of its time. Dealing in themes of communism and fascism, Metropolis is the story of two separate societies who speak the same language, but cannot communicate: the thinkers, who dream up projects but have no idea how they work, and the workers, who carry out the plans of the thinkers but have no idea what any of the things they build actually do. Sounds kinda like our job, actually….
All videos courtesy of YouTube
